You’ve seen the movie. You know the drama—the lawsuits, the broken friendships, and that one scene where a laptop gets smashed over a desk. But The Social Network took some massive liberties with the truth. Honestly, the real story of the group that built the world's most dominant social platform is way more nuanced than a Hollywood script.
Most people can name Mark Zuckerberg without blinking. But he wasn't alone in that Kirkland House dorm. There were four other guys. Some became billionaires, one became a political strategist, and another basically vanished into the world of venture capital in Singapore.
The "Harvard Five" consisted of Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Andrew McCollum. Here is exactly who they are and what they’ve been doing while Zuck was busy rebranding the whole operation to Meta.
The Original Crew: Who Are All the Cofounders of Facebook?
In February 2004, the site wasn't even called Facebook. It was "TheFacebook.com." It was a clunky, blue-and-white directory meant to solve a simple problem: Harvard didn't have a universal student face book.
1. Mark Zuckerberg: The Architect
We don’t need to spend forever here. Mark was the lead coder and the driving force. He’s the only one left. By 2026, his pivot into AI and the "metaverse" has faced its fair share of eye-rolls, but he still sits on a net worth hovering around $220 billion. He owns the voting power. He makes the rules. Basically, he is the company.
2. Eduardo Saverin: The Money Man (and the Legal Rival)
Eduardo was the first person Mark turned to. Why? Because Eduardo had money. He provided the initial $1,000 to get the servers running. He was the first CFO.
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But things went south fast. While the rest of the team moved to California in the summer of 2004, Eduardo stayed in New York for an internship at Lehman Brothers. He froze the company’s bank account during a dispute, and Mark eventually used a corporate reorganization to dilute Eduardo's shares to almost nothing.
The fallout was legendary. Eduardo sued, won a settlement that restored his name as a cofounder, and eventually renounced his U.S. citizenship to move to Singapore. Today, he’s one of the wealthiest people in Asia, running B Capital, a massive venture capital firm. He's doing just fine.
3. Dustin Moskovitz: The "Marathon Coder"
Dustin was Mark’s roommate and the guy who actually helped build the thing. He wasn't a programmer at first; he literally taught himself Perl and PHP in a matter of days just to help out.
He was Facebook’s first CTO. He left in 2008 because he didn't want to be a "big manager" anymore. He wanted to build tools that actually helped people work. That led him to start Asana, the project management giant.
Fun fact: Dustin was technically the world's youngest self-made billionaire for a while, beating Zuck by about eight days because he's slightly younger.
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In early 2025, Dustin announced he’d be stepping down as CEO of Asana to move into a Chairman role. He’s also become a massive philanthropist through "Open Philanthropy," focusing on things like pandemic preparedness and AI safety.
4. Chris Hughes: The "Empath"
Every tech team needs a non-tech person. That was Chris. A literature and history major, he was the one who understood how people actually used the site. He was the spokesperson and the guy who suggested many of the site's most popular social features.
Chris left early, in 2007, but not to start another tech company. He joined Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. He's often credited with being the "secret weapon" that used social media to revolutionize political fundraising.
He later bought The New Republic magazine (which didn't go great) and has since become a vocal critic of the very company he helped start. In 2019, he wrote a famous op-ed in the New York Times arguing that Facebook has become a monopoly and should be broken up. Talk about a plot twist.
5. Andrew McCollum: The Designer
Andrew is the cofounder people usually forget. He was the graphic artist. He designed the original "TheFacebook" logo—the one with Al Pacino’s face hidden in binary code (yeah, really).
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He worked on a side project with Mark called Wirehog, a file-sharing service that never really took off. Andrew left in 2007 to finish his degree at Harvard. He’s now the CEO of Philo, a streaming TV service. Unlike the others, he’s kept a relatively low profile, focusing on being an angel investor and tech executive rather than a public figure.
Why the "Five Founders" Narrative Matters
You might wonder why we care about guys who left the company twenty years ago. It's because their departure shaped what Meta is today.
When Eduardo was pushed out, it solidified Mark's "move fast and break things" mentality. When Chris Hughes left, the "empathetic" side of the product arguably started to fade in favor of raw growth algorithms.
The ownership structure they started with is the reason Mark still has total control. Because he survived the early internal "civil wars," he was able to set up a dual-class share structure that means nobody—not even the biggest hedge funds on Earth—can fire him.
What You Can Learn From the Facebook Founders
If you're looking at this story as a founder or just someone interested in tech history, there are some pretty blunt takeaways here:
- Equity is everything. Eduardo’s lawsuit was over his stake being diluted. Understand your cap table before you sign anything.
- The "Non-Tech" guy is vital. Without Chris Hughes, Facebook might have just been a cold, technical directory instead of a "social" network.
- Move on when the mission changes. Dustin and Andrew didn't stay to become corporate cogs. They used their success to build things they actually cared about (Asana and Philo).
If you want to understand the current state of social media, you have to look at these five guys. They weren't just roommates; they were the accidental architects of how we talk to each other in 2026.
Next Steps:
If you're interested in the financial side of this, look into the "Dual-Class Share Structure" that Zuckerberg used after the cofounder disputes. It explains why he remains the most powerful CEO in tech today. You might also want to check out Chris Hughes’ book, Fair Shot, to see his perspective on wealth inequality after making $500 million from a college project.